


The Tattoo

by WandererRiha



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: AU, F/M, Fun with Tropes, Gen, M/M, Soulmates, gets sad at the end, no beta we die like meh, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2020-09-05 18:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20277874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WandererRiha/pseuds/WandererRiha
Summary: The name of destiny written on their hands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is all LadyKF 's fault.

There’s no such thing as soulmates. Sephiroth’s heard it from Professor Hojo for as long as he can remember. It’s superstitious nonsense. He’s a SOLDIER. SOLDIER’s don’t waste their time on foolish romantic notions, and doesn’t he have training to do? Sephiroth does, and so he takes his sword and heads to the simulator. He’s young, only thirteen, but he already looks like fifteen or sixteen. That’s what the Planet’s own dose of mako will do to a guy. He tries to put the idea out of his head and concentrate on forms, but his hand itches. It isn’t his sword hand, thank goodness. After practice, he pulls his gloves off and examines the back of his hand. There’s a faint mark there; a tea stain slightly darker than his usually fair skin. Maybe it’s just a rash.

Sephiroth doesn’t have time to think about romance. He’s to be shipped to Wutai in two weeks. He’s fifteen and the stain on his hand has turned into a name. It doesn’t look like anything but a weird pattern on his otherwise unblemished skin, but he can read it. He reads it as often as he can: Felicia. It’s the name of the person who loves him, or rather, the person who will love him. Sure he has Genesis and Angeal, but it’s not the same thing. Maybe once the war is over, he can look for her, and things will be better. Felicia. He falls asleep with the taste of it on his tongue.

Wutai is over, but the fires he set there have only spread to Midgar. Angeal’s dying, Genesis has defected, and most days it feels like Zack is the only thing standing between Sephiroth and completely losing his godsdamned mind. Even Felicia seems to have deserted him. The name on his hand has faded, whole letters disappearing. In desperation, he shows it to the Professor. Hojo scowls at him, disapproving. Sephiroth wonders what it is he’s done wrong this time? It’s not as if he wrote the name himself.

“I knew this girl,” the Professor tells him, and Sephiroth’s jaw nearly hits the floor. “She’s dead.”

He doesn’t believe it. He _can’t_ believe it. And yet… His friends have abandoned him. He’s alone now. Has Felicia left him too? He sits down heavily on one of the exam tables.

“I know it hurts.” The Professor’s voice is gentle, a tone Sephiroth’s not heard from his lips at any point in his life. It sends a chill shivering through him. “Believe me, I know. It’s better if you can’t see if. If you don’t remember.”

As the Professor approaches him with an instrument Sephiroth doesn’t recognize, he notices a thick scar on the back of Hojo’s right hand. Too late, he understands.

He leaves the Science Department with a bandage around his hand and tears standing unshed in his eyes. It isn’t the pain in his hand, it’s the pain in his heart. Across the back of his hand, Hojo has drawn an elaborate tattoo, completely obscuring what letters remained. The person who loved him is gone. He’s never met her, and he’s not sure how he’ll learn to live without her.

The tattoo fades after about six months. Accelerated healing due to all the mako. After a year, it’s gone entirely. The scars linger in Sephiroth’s mind and heart, and not on his skin. A handful of letters remain, but they’ve shifted, and two new ones have appeared, Now it spells out something different: Elfe. The hell kind of a name is that?

It’s not until the briefing for Corel that it hits him, that he makes the connection. Inside the folder, he reads the name and sees the photo next to it. Elfe, leader of Avalanche. He sits frozen, staring at her sullen mugshot while the briefing goes on around him. He’s found her, and now he’s got to kill her. All evidence suggests she doesn’t love him, she hates him. What must she have thought when she found her name appearing on her skin like invisible ink? Had she done like the Professor and tried to obliterate it? Had she tried to cut it away, to burn it off, or simply cover it in ink?

He’s the last to leave, wandering out of the briefing room as if in a dream. Maybe he is being a sentimental fool. What kind of idiot pines after a woman who only knows him by a word, a name on her skin? She’s known him longer than he’s known her. Wutai has made him famous in all the wrong ways. She’s heard the war stories, has an active vendetta against Shinra. She can only hate him. He goes to his room, intending to pack, but drops heavily onto the sofa instead. It takes more than an hour for him to stop crying.

\--

Elfe has never had a name on her hand. For as long as she can remember, she’s had a shard of materia there instead. That’s fine. She needs no one, least of all a soulmate. Not everyone gets the marks, and when she was thirteen, it had been devastating. She’s twenty-five now, and could care less. All that matters is the death of Shinra and the life of the Planet.

Intelligence says Shinra’s on to them. That’s fine. Avalanche is on to Shinra. They’ve spent months spying on each other and taking potshots. This time, Shinra won’t know what hit them. Sneaking into Corel via the vast network of mine tunnels is easy. Laying the explosives proves a bit more difficult. Of course, their luck can’t last forever. The damn Turks get in the way, and then Sephiroth shows up. Shinra’s sent their greatest weapon to send a message: they mean business. Elfe draws her sword, not even a little bit afraid. She means business too.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Sephiroth tells her. There’s something in his face, in his tone, that sounds like the truth. But how can a weapon not want to fight? What is a sword meant for, if not to kill? Elfe decides that even if he doesn’t want to fight her, she wants to fight him.

Oddly enough, she wins. Okay, so maybe it’s a technical win- he leaves in the middle of the battle, but not before she’s sent him sprawling in the dust- but virtually no one can say they’ve crossed swords with Sephiroth and lived to tell the tale. Kind of him to offer some propaganda she can use for her own purposes.

After Veld, after Fuhito, after Zirconiade, she’s got a whole materia and an empty heart. For the space of a few minutes, she had glimpsed what the stone had hidden. The diamond takes up the whole of her hand, but beneath its faceted surface, she can now see the name shimmering like stones at the bottom of a mountain lake:

_Sephiroth_

For a long time, she isn’t sure what to think or feel. At first she’s angry, cannot believe the gods would play such a malicious prank. There are rumors of a destroyed reactor in Nibelheim, of a village burned to the ground in the process, and she wonders: was that for her? She’ll never know. It’s the last time anyone sees or hears of the legendary Silver General.

“I had my chance,” she tells her father one afternoon when the pain is particularly bad. “I had it and I lost it.”

Veld strokes a hand over her hair, his expression kind, yet so sad.

“I know how that goes,” he says, and tilts his metal arm toward her. There’s something engraved on one of the struts inside his forearm. It’s so delicate, she’d never noticed it before. Squinting, she realizes it’s a name. And it isn’t her mother’s.

“Vincent?”

He nods. “Never could do anything the easy way. I had my chance and I lost it. Sometimes...that’s just the way it is.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s not uncommon to have a soul mark. It’s usually a name, a first name, the name of the person who will complete you. A name has been spelled out across Lucrecia’s wrist since she was fifteen; a bit late to receive a soul mark, but at least she has one. Her friends like to tease her that her soulmate must be romantic with a name like “Valentine”.

It’s not until grad school that she realizes it’s a last name.

Professor Grimoire Valentine is highly respected, revered by his peers and employers as well as his students. Lucrecia stands positively in awe of him. At first she’d been frightened of him. He’s tall, dark, and brooding but in a way that does not immediately strike one as alluring. But then he’d smiled, and spoken kindly to her, and she loved him after that. Not romantically, of course, gods no. But… She looks at the name on her arm and wonders.

He’s got thirty years on her, lost a wife to illness, has a grown son about her age. He wears gloves and long sleeves to cover the scar where his wife’s name had once been. He doesn’t like Lucrecia, not like that, but he is fond of her- that was his word; “fond”. Lucrecia is fond of him too.

And then he’s gone, and it’s her fault, but the name on her wrist does not disappear. Maybe it’s a first name after all?

She manages to snag one of the coveted internships with Professor Gast- probably due to her familiarity with Professor Valentine. It’s a final gift from her beloved mentor, or so she thinks when she gets the acceptance letter. Then she meets his son, and it’s as if she’s been struck through the heart.

Vincent too seems cold and cruel on the surface. He’s a Turk. He must surely harbor a vicious streak. He won’t speak; not to her, not to anyone. When he finally does...it’s like having his father smile down at her all over again. He’s just alone, and hurt, and Lucrecia wants to hug him and tell him everything will be alright.

Turns out that yes, he’s got the suspected vicious streak, but in the same way a cat has claws. It’s just part of him, not necessarily dangerous on its own, and she knows he would never turn it on her. She stops being afraid of him, and wonders if the name on her wrist had always been that of the younger Valentine. She dares to slide back the many bracelets to show him. Blushing, he unbuttons a cuff and pushes up his left sleeve. Her name is written there as if she’d penned it in her own handwriting. They kiss. That’s how it starts.

She could lose her job for this, though it’s doubtful if he would. It isn’t fair. Men are always exempt from punishment, particularly when it’s their fault. Not that she wants Vincent punished, but she’d like a little backup, here. Hojo finds out, threatens to tell Gast, and convinces her to put their blunder to good use. It’s safe. It’ll be fine. The idea was to produce a Cetra, after all. Lucrecia isn’t wild about the idea, but there’s nothing else to be done about it.

Vincent doesn’t see it that way. He and Hojo fight, and really, she had expected Hojo to wind up dead, not Vincent. She does what she can, but it’s not enough. He’s not alive, but the name on her wrist is still there. She holds onto it, onto hope, until the baby is born. Then he’s taken from her, as is Vincent. Gast disappears with one of the other interns, oblivious and unconcerned. Hojo seizes her son and her research and claims both as his own. She cannot stop him. Unable to look at it any longer, she crosses out the name herself with a scalpel stolen from the lab. But his name doesn’t disappear. Neither does hers.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When tropes don't obey the rules.

Soulmarks are not uncommon. Most everyone discovers the name of their soulmate, their one true love, the person that will complete them written somewhere on their skin. It’s more strange to not have one. The Valentine family has never been one to suffer ‘common’. Perhaps for this reason, Vincent Valentine has two soulmarks. They fade into being at the same time, one on the underside of each forearm. One name is longer than the other. On his left arm, letters loop in graceful cursive to spell out a woman’s name: Lucrecia. On his right arm is a short, jagged scrawl of just four letters: Veld. For the longest time, he has no idea what to make of it.

Vincent is encouraged to cover the shorter of the two names. Makeup, long sleeves, a wrist guard wide enough to hide it from view. His parents advise him to ignore it, suggesting he focus on the longer name, as this will undoubtedly one day be his wife. Because he’s been told to dismiss the second mark, Vincent can’t help thinking about it all the more. Why two? Is Veld a man or a woman? What will they be to Vincent?

He finds out several years later upon joining the Turks. Veld is a smart-assed, smart-mouthed punk who grew up poor and dirty in the slums of Midgar. Everything about Vincent from his faint Wutaian accent, expensive education, and flawless manners seems to cause Veld personal offense. For a while, Vincent does his best to simply avoid him. The fight they eventually get into is inevitable. No one wins, but they emerge the best of friends.

Despite countless missions, endless training, and even a shared apartment, their friendship doesn’t last. Vincent will forever date it to when he finally dared to show Veld the name he kept hidden beneath gloves that were ostensibly to protect his hands from the recoil of his pistols. Veld blinks, eyeing his own name, as well as the other one on Vincent’s upturned arms. He doesn’t say anything, just stares and thinks. Vincent sits, sweats, and wishes he’d never bared the otherwise inoffensive few inches of skin.

“Huh,” Veld says, bemused, after several agonizing minutes. “Okay.”

But it isn’t.

Something...happens after that. What it is, Vincent can’t be sure, but it feels as if he and Veld are growing apart. When Veld’s tapped to become Chief, it only becomes more pronounced. Now it’s Veld organizing agents and giving orders. Eventually Veld orders him away, out to the mountains an ocean away. Out to Nibelheim where he can’t get underfoot or cause any trouble.

It’s like Veld has forgotten who Vincent is.

Vincent sulks and seethes by turns, wishing he was brave enough to peel off the layer of skin with Veld’s name. Clearly, the Cosmos is wrong. Veld doesn’t complete him. He can’t. He won’t. He’s certainly not the reason while Vincent’s body feels at once empty and yet so heavy.

It’s not until several days after he arrives at the ass-end of nowhere town that he finally meets her. Just looking at her is enough for him to know, it’s her. Lucrecia. His other soulmate. It takes her several weeks but at last she pushes up the sleeve of her lab coat and shows him the name there: Valentine. He nearly falls over. Yet it’s curious. Why his first name and not his last? It’s not until she tells him about the failed excursion that it makes sense. She’s crying, face hidden in his throat, huddling into the circle of his arms. They’re naked in her bed, and Vincent feels like he’s been punched in the gut. She’d been in love with his father. Is she in love with him?

He doesn’t know.

He knows this much: he lost Veld. He won’t lose her too.

No sooner has he made up his mind than it all goes to hell. Evidently Hojo’s been fucking her too. Whether or not it’s consensual, Vincent doesn’t know. He doesn’t get the chance to ask. Hojo shoots him before he can get a word in. When he wakes up, the arm that bore her name is gone.

He loses a lot of other things over the years.

Memories, sanity, privacy inside his own head, all these things he loses along with the next thirty years. The next time he opens his eyes, he’s lying in a coffin with strangers staring down at him. The promise of revenge on Hojo is the only thing that gives him strength enough to stand and follow them.

It’s a little like being with the Turks again; constantly on the run from one mission to another. There’s always something to fight, something to kill. It doesn’t leave him any time to think about anything but the task at hand. It’s just as well. If he had more than five minutes to think about any of it, he’d probably go mad.

When it does end, when it’s finally over, Vincent isn’t sure what to think or feel. The nameless emotion haunting him is too similar to the one that followed him out to Nibelheim. After he left home. Left Veld. Veld who’s either an old man, or dead. Maybe both. There’s a new kid running the Turks now, and Vincent can’t work up the brass to ask him about his former Chief. For all he knows, Tseng put the bullet between Veld’s eyes himself. Wouldn’t be the first time. That was how Tally got the chair, after all.

Returning to normal life is...weird. To be fair, it’s difficult for all of them. After so much time together on the road, living, breathing, fighting, sleeping, so deep in each other’s pockets that separating to return to their old lives is much harder than any of them had thought it would be.

Barret has Marlene to return to, and Cloud and Tifa settle into her orbit as surrogate parents. They take in other infant strays and care for them. There are too many children without parents these days. Yuffie returns to Wutai, Nanaki to Cosmo Canyon. Reeve and Cid go back to what’s left of Shinra to try to salvage something from the wreckage. That leaves Vincent alone with no partner and no mission; a ghost drifting through this modern age with nothing to tether him to the here and now.

Until he finds another ghost, just as lost and alone as he is.

“_...Veld?_” he asks the apparition, for surely this cannot be real.

The ghost is old, his face scarred and weathered, but Vincent would know it anywhere.

“Valentine,” the ghost says, maddeningly calm. “Thought you were dead.”

“Not quite. I thought the same of you.”

Veld smirks. “It’s hard as hell to kill a Turk.”

“Yes,” Vincent agrees, reaching to shake Veld’s offered hand. It’s warm and solid, the grip firm. This he remembers. This is real. “It is.”


End file.
